


5 Things

by splash_the_cat



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Aliens Made Them Do It, Alternate Universe, Angst, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kidswap, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2006-09-10
Updated: 2007-04-30
Packaged: 2018-02-10 03:32:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 7,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2009319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splash_the_cat/pseuds/splash_the_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of my "5 Things" responses from when the meme ate SG-1 fandom on lj.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Five AUs that SG-1 agrees to never speak of again

For [](http://surreallis.livejournal.com/profile)[**surreallis**](http://surreallis.livejournal.com/): "Five AUs that SG-1 agrees to never speak of again."

1\. The one where Sam was a guy with biceps as big as Teal'c's, Daniel was a girl with really big... and Teal'c was three feet tall and covered in pink fur. Jack still has nightmares about that one.

2\. The one where General Hammond wore a toupee. They have a very hard time keeping straight faces in the briefing after that mission.

3\. The one where Charlie was still alive. They take Jack out drinking after that one, and hours later pour him into bed, taking off his boots and wiping his face. He wakes up in the middle of the afternoon, eyes gummed and breath rank, to find a glass of water and bottle of aspirin on the nightstand next to the picture of his son. When he finally makes it to the base, he finds his team having dinner in the mess. Daniel hands him a cup of coffee, Teal'c offers to share his lasagna, and Carter explains the thing in her lab.

Watching Carter and Daniel wave their hands around as the explanation gets increasingly complicated, Jack shovels a bite of lasagna into his mouth, even though his stomach is churning.

4\. The one where Felger was in charge of the SGC. They don't want to give their universe any ideas.

5\. The one where they were all having sex. With each other. Loudly and for what seemed like hours. It's dead silent in the locker room once they get home, and rather than all crowding into the showers like usual, they take turns.

And no one comments that every shower takes a really long time.


	2. Five moods Jack hates seeing Sam in

For [](http://deejay435.livejournal.com/profile)[**deejay435**](http://deejay435.livejournal.com/) :

1\. Smug. Especially when he forgets and lets slip that he really did (mostly) understand her explanation of fourth dimensional space curvature.

2\. Cheerful. Well, he doesn't hate it so much as it scares him a little. No one should be that happy before 0800 at the _earliest_. It's inhuman.

3\. Earnest. Because that usually means Daniel will be right behind her, and they're going to tag-team him into letting them do something involving five syllable words and great risk of bodily harm to one or both of them, or worse, him. It was worse in the beginning, but only because after about the fourth year on SG-1 they stopped asking for permission so much as asking for forgiveness. See #1.

4\. Frustrated. It's not just because he's afraid she's going to pop a vessel and stroke out one of these days, with the way she drives herself, but because she loses the big picture in her focus. He knows she'll learn to balance it eventually, because she's Carter, but watching the soldier beat up the scientist every time it happens makes him worry that she's never going to be truly happy in both roles, though he knows she'd never be happy with just one or the other, either.

5\. Terrified. He's only seen it once, when she had Jolinar stuck in her head, and then he thought it was just the snake trying to fuck with him. But later, years later, Daniel admits that Carter told him that it was really her. Jack wakes up the next three nights in a row with the sound of Carter's panicked voice begging him to help ringing in his ears.

 

 


	3. Five books Jack O'Neill cannot live without.

For nandamai: 

1\. New York Times Crossword Puzzle Dictionary. "Just to even the odds, so this is fair," Carter had said when she gave it to him, along with a sweet smile that he knew hid the cold heart of an evil, evil woman. She was viciously competitive about her crosswords, and didn't hesitate to resort to psychological warfare.

Though he only has to use it about half the time, he still makes up words to fit, even after he's figured out the actual answer. It irritates the crap out of her.

2\. Haroun and the Sea of Stories. His truck was in the shop, and he had borrowed Sara's car to pick up Charlie from a start of the year baseball meeting. He was shipping out to the Gulf in three days. Charlie had run out just after Jack arrived to tell him the meeting was running late, and seeing the book under a pile of papers in the back seat, Jack thumbed through the first few pages. Sara had been talking about it at dinner the other night, after one of her six different book club meetings, and Jack only remembered the conversation because he'd actually heard of Salman Rushdie, whereas the names of most of the writers she read slid in and right out of his head. With a mid-September rain drumming on the roof of the car Jack settled in and started to read. He didn't hear Charlie until the poor kid pounded on the window half an hour later, soaked to the skin.

Sara let Jack take her copy when he left, and he finished it on the transport flight to Nellis for a series of air combat exercises before his deployment. He writes Sara a long letter on his flight overseas, mostly about the book, and if the tone of her reply hints at her surprise, it's still filled with her quick wit and observations about the book, six pages worth. They debate the book back and forth for the eight months he's gone, and Jack's a little ashamed that he takes for granted how smart Sara is.

3\. The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer. He carries it in his pack, and reads aloud choice quotes on the days that he just knows Daniel is going to crawl under his skin, because why suffer alone?

4\. Where the Wild Things Are. Charlie hated it, but let Jack read it to him for years before it got buried at the back of a shelf. Sara gave it to Jack, along with pictures and some of Charlie's toys, when he moved out of the house. It all sat in a box in the back seat of his truck for two years. Now it's tucked between some general archaeology book he picked up after Daniel came back, and the Norton's star guide Carter had bought him the second Christmas the team was together. He read it to Cassie the night of the little party they threw to celebrate her adoption by Fraiser, and she fell asleep on his lap, clutching the book.

5\. Contact. He'd been out shopping a few weeks after Abydos, standing in line at some store where it was tucked behind a NY Times Best Seller in the checkout line. He'd picked it up on a whim and read it all that night. It was eerily reminiscent of the whole thing with the Stargate, which made him close it and shove it under the couch cushion a few times. But he read it four more times over the next few weeks. The story stuck in his gut, though he refused to really think to hard about why.


	4. Five reasons the SGC needs Siler's giant wrench

For [](http://syxp.livejournal.com/profile)[**syxp**](http://syxp.livejournal.com/), who wanted: "Five reasons the SGC needs Siler's giant wrench."

1\. That bolt on the cranky hot water system on Level 18. There's nothing more frightening than SG-1 desperate for a hot shower after a long mission. Especially that one with the mud that smelled like rotten eggs and a three-week-old bean burrito.

2\. The air compressor in Isolation Room 3. All it ever takes is a good whack. Doctor Fraiser is always so nice when he reports that it's back online that he feels a little guilty, and hopes she never notices the huge dent he's made in the casing.

3\. The time SG-18 brought back those huge flowers, and Colonel O'Neill started acting all weird. It was only a mild concussion, Major Carter later told Siler, and the Colonel probably wouldn't remember anything but the headache when he woke up, and really, she agreed it was a good trade for stopping O'Neill from blowing up the base.

Still, Major Carter promised Siler that it was their little secret.

4\. An alien incursion, a locked-down base, and he was trapped in a room with fourteen terrified kids (part of the refugee group from Vredala who they hadn't been able to transfer before the lockdown went into effect) and an alien twice his size, and with very large teeth. He ended up in the infirmary (again) for a week, but General Hammond came down and shook his hand, and when the SGC sent a team to the Vredalan's new world to check up on how they were managing a month later, Colonel Gonzalez brought back a packet of brightly-colored drawings and letters from the kids. Siler still has the one of him fighting off the alien with his wrench hanging in his locker.

5\. The third shift baseball league games in the Gate room. Everyone wanted to be on his team, at least until he managed to crack the control room window with a foul ball.


	5. Five baby names that Jack suggested and Sam refused to even consider

[](http://vicki595.livejournal.com/profile)[**vicki595**](http://vicki595.livejournal.com/) wanted "Five baby names that Jack suggested and Sam refused to even consider."

1\. Gertrude. What? It's a classic.

2\. Stanley. Carter refused to believe it was his great-grandfather's name. He probably should have waited until after the hockey finals to suggest it.

3\. Homer. Or Marge, if it's a girl. He'd even give her Lisa, and hey that sounds perfectly normal, right? When she pins him with that look, the one he always suspected was lurking underneath that professional demeanor all those years, he just shrugs and says, "I had to at least _try_."

4\. Jack Junior. "One of you," Sam said, "is more than enough." Jack's still not sure if it was a compliment or a condemnation.

5\. David. "What do you have against David?" Jack asked after she made a face at his suggestion. "It's a perfectly ordinary name, I feel the need to point out, Miss 'Damn it Jack, would you come up with something _normal_ '."

"It was also the name of my first boyfriend."

"Oh." Yeah, that would be a little creepy. "Okay, no David. So how about Dagbert?"


	6. Five remedies Jack suggested to Sam when she had the hiccups off-world

[](http://majorsamfan.livejournal.com/profile)[**majorsamfan**](http://majorsamfan.livejournal.com/) wanted Five remedies Jack suggested to Sam when she had the hiccups off-world.

1\. He offers to scare her. She rolls her eyes and says that not only doesn't it work, but the one time her brother tried that, she'd slugged him and given him a black eye. Later, after they're ambushed by a squad of Jaffa and a staff blast blows apart the tree she's hiding behind, he doesn't point out that she's stopped hiccupping.

2\. PCX-674. State dinner, all the trappings, and Carter's miserable. They're all in borrowed formalwear, heavy on stiff brocade, and Carter's wrapped tight in layer after layer. Jack's pretty sure she can barely breathe, and when the hiccups start, she looks a little green around the gills. There's a bowl of citrusy-smelling things on the over-laden dinner table, and he remembers hearing something somewhere about lemons fixing hiccups. He palms one, slipping it into Carter's hand. "Suck on this."

She does. She makes a face and whispers, "It tastes like-" Her eyes flash wide open, all the color rushes out of her face, and Jack thinks, "Uh oh," as she throws up all over his borrowed shoes.

3\. They're twenty feet above a storm-swollen river on a rope and plank bridge. Carter's been hiccupping since they came through the gate, despite their eclectic collected wisdom about potential cures. She's now complaining that her ribs hurt from laughing at the more outrageous suggestions, so Jack says, "Let's go back to basics. Try holding your breath," just before the plank she's standing on cracks in half, and she vanishes into the roiling water below.

They fish her out of the water half a mile downstream. She's limp and cold and blue, and as they pull her up the bank Daniel bends close to wipe a smear of mud and blood from her face. "Oh, God, she's not breathing. She's not breathing!"

Two minutes of CPR feels like forever and Jack restrains a whoop of relief when she coughs up water and opens her eyes. He wraps her in a blanket and says, "That's not what I meant."

4\. After spending his watch listening to Carter's hitched breathing, Jack stage whispers across their campsite, "Hey, Carter, you asleep yet?"

"Yes." She pokes her head out of her sleeping bag, hair tousled, and hiccups again.

"Come here. I've got an idea."

Another hiccup ruins her aggrieved sigh, and she crawls out, with a glare he interprets as "This better be good."

She sits next to him, holding her hands out over the low fire. "So, what's your grand plan, sir?"

"Well, I once heard that if you put a butter knife in a glass of water, and drink with the knife propped against your forehead, it forces you to tilt your head back far enough that..."

"That what?"

"That something happens to stop the hiccups."

She all but radiates skepticism, and well, said out loud like that it does sound a little dumb, but he's committed. He counters her "We're lacking both butter knife and a glass," with his canteen and the spoon from his MRE.

The result is one pissed off Carter with a soaking wet shirt. Jack slinks off to his sleeping bag, leaving her to the next watch, still hiccupping.

5\. She's been hiccupping for three days straight, and is desperate enough to say, "Okay" when Jack tell her, "Stand on your head." It doesn't work and she ends up adding a sprained wrist to her pain. And even though she insists that the neat imprint of her boot heel on his right cheek was a complete accident from when she fell over, he's not sure he believes her.


	7. Five other times Cam Mitchell lost his pants (or all his clothes)

[](http://macgyvergal.livejournal.com/profile)[**macgyvergal**](http://macgyvergal.livejournal.com/) wanted "Five other times Cam Mitchell lost his pants (or all his clothes)"

 

1\. Cakewalk. Easy-peasy. Home in time for dinner. Daniel chants Cam's words back at him, huffing them out between gasping breaths as they charge out of the warehouse, six very large, very angry dogs at their heels. Cam's carrying the artifact they'd recovered from the Trust, and of course it can't be something small, so he's the last one to make it to the fence surrounding the warehouse property. Teal'c and Daniel are already on the other side, and Sam's perched at the top yelling something about hurrying. Like he couldn't figure _that_ out, what with Cujo and company howling in his wake.

From ten feet away he heaves the artifact, not bothering to watch it arc up and over as he leaps for the fence. He scrambles up, letting out a whoop of victory that slides into a squeal as sharp teeth nip his skin. Fucking Cujo's _hanging off his pantleg_ , twisting and jerking, and it's all Cam can do to hang onto the fence, shoulders burning as he tried to shake off the damn dog.

Visions of all those teeth waiting below flash like frames of a bad horror flick as he slips a little, and he'll never ever admit how close he comes to pissing his shorts. Then Sam, _thank you Sam!_ is hanging upside down from the top of the fence, those long fingers clenched into the collar of his shirt.

"Your pants!"

Reason kicks through panic and he risks letting go with one hand to fumble at his belt and button fly. He kicks and wriggles as Sam heaves, and dog and denim slip free.

He and Sam tumble over the top of the fence, into Teal'c and Daniel's arms. Sam's sort of half sprawled across his lap, muttering something about "Idiot," and Cam's grateful he decided not to go commando today.

2\. He's in a briefing. Jackson's on about something old. Yadda whatever blah blah. Talk is cheap, the old stuff isn't going anywhere, and Cam wants to go, get out and shoot some bad guys.

"All right, enough." Jackson mouth is wide open, mid-syllable, Teal'c's eyebrow is cocked and loaded. "We're SG-1, and screw this old stuff, we need to go kick some ass. Fucking Ess. Gee. One, baby." Cam shoves his chair back from the table and leaps from his seat to lead his team into battle.

Until Sam says, "Forget something, Camshaft?"

That's when he realizes it's a little drafty below the belt.

"Cam?"

Sam again, insistent, and shit, he's got to hide and it would have to be the day we wears those raggedy-ass shorts with "Flyboy" across the seat. But he's cornered and he can't get away, something holding him in place-

Thrashing out of his sleeping bag, he blinks awake to find Sam staring at him quizzically from across the campfire. Right. Some alien planet. Bad dream.

He waves Sam off with an "I'm okay, nothing to see," and huddles back down into the bag.

And he checks to make sure he's wearing his pants.

 

3\. The music is loud, and Cam thinks it's out of tune, but it reminds him a little of "Funkadelic," and he can get down with that. Get dooooown. He swings his hips to the beat: left, right, back, thrust. Somebody whistles and he does the thrust again. Hoo ya. He adds a spin and another thrust, and shit this is good. Loose as a goose. He wants to give a good show, like… like that movie with the British guys stripping.

The belt takes him a few minutes, but he manages to yank it loose and fling it away. He doesn't remember his boots until his pants are around his ankles. Stupid double-knotted lacing. He staggers, bent-double, his head feeling really, really big all of a sudden. Sparkles flare in his eyes, Saturday Night Fever disco ball across his field of vision, and he's tired, and maybe he'll just lay down right-

The next morning Cam pretends the snorts and chuckles are just the pounding of his hangover, even as he uncharitably wonders if his team set him up. He wouldn't put it past them, now that he knew that they were all really petty and kind of childish. Intergalactic heroes, his ass.

Something cool drags across his forehead and he risks opening his eyes. Sam's crouched over him, one of Jackson's bandanas dangling from her finger. She wipes his face and slides her hand under the back of his neck, holding the wet bandana there. "At least it wasn't me this time."

4\. He's in bed. He's naked. He aches everywhere, but it's good, like after a good hard run or a good hard-

Oh, fuck.

There are breasts pressed against his shoulder - soft, nice size, and he gets a little distracted for a second by puckered nipples just inches away, until they shift a little and he looks up.

Sam.

Sam's breasts. Sam's really awesome breasts, which he now remembers holding cupped in his hands as she straddled him.

Her eyes stutter open, heavy with sleep and satisfaction. "Hey."

"Hey." Smooth, Mitchell. But really, maybe he deserves some slack. This wasn't exactly in the job description. "So. Did the aliens make us have sex?" It's rhetorical, really – he can smell it on her, on him, on the sheets of their alien love nest. And he's remembering bits and pieces: what she sounds like, what she tastes like. Which is totally hot, but makes it damn hard to look her in the eye.

"Yup." Yawning, Sam stretches. It's a languorous affair of undulations that ends with her stretched out on her side facing him, and his dick hard as a rock.

"And you're so calm about this because…?" He's trying for calm too, and hopes his voice didn't go as high as it sounded to his ears.

She pats him on the thigh as she slips out of the bed and his dick twitches. "It happens all the time."

 

5\. PSX 976. They're on an overnight survey - quick, dirty and boring. The most boring planet he's been to yet, so he's damned surprised to wake up the morning with no sign of his pants. Cam repacks his pack four times, turns the campsite upside down, even does a quarter mile perimeter sweep.

In the end, he holds his head up high as he marches back through the gate in his boxer briefs. His team's pretty good about the whole thing, keeping the ribbing to a minimum, faking their sympathy pretty sincerely, and eventually he decides to just let it go.

Then Daniel lets slip, about a month later, that he found Cam's pants in Teal'c's pack. And he decides he's still going to let it go, because Cam's pretty sure that while paybacks would be sweet, escalating anything with Teal'c would guarantee he'd lose in the end, and last thing he wants is to end up in the gate room bare-assed and saluting the general in the entirely wrong way.


	8. Five movies Teal'c showed Vala when she joined the SGC

[](http://iuliamentis.livejournal.com/profile)[**iuliamentis**](http://iuliamentis.livejournal.com/) wanted **Five movies Teal'c showed Vala when she joined the SGC**.

1\. Star Wars. "I see why you like this one so much," Vala says as Teal'c removes the DVD from the player and inserts "Empire." "A band of rebels against the evil overlords, a man joining forces with unlikely allies to overcome great odds…"

Teal'c knows her childish antics hide a calculating mind, but he still does not expect her to see through him quite so easily. "I enjoy the space battles."

"They are exciting," she agrees, and he pushes the loaded tray into the DVD player, not sure if he is relieved or annoyed at the indulgence in her tone at his change of subject. "You know what else would be exciting? Popcorn. Isn't it traditional to have popcorn with a movie?"

"I believe Colonel Carter used to keep some in her lab. I will see if it is still there."

Vala smiles, and says, "You are my hero."

 

2\. Casablanca. "You said it was romantic." Teal'c ignored the accusation in Vala's voice, but it was followed up with a handful of popcorn. He brushed salt and butter from his skin as she flopped back onto his bed, scattering more popcorn across his blankets. "That wasn't romantic. It was _pathetic_. No one gets what they want in the end."

That was telling, Teal'c thought, if that were her true take on romance – nothing more than self-serving acquisition. "Such is the nature of war," he said. "And often of love."

Vala only rolled her eyes and propped her feet on his pillow. "You, Teal'c, are a pessimist. Let's watch something happy next time."

3\. The Sound of Music. "Am I sensing a theme with war and oppression in your entertainment choices?" Vala tossed a Snowcap up and caught it on her tongue. She wiggled it against the roof of her mouth and hmmed happily at the sweet taste.

Teal'c had outlawed popcorn in his room during their movie watching, and so Vala had asked Airman Martinez, who'd been assigned to watch her early in her stay, what other food was traditional to the film viewing experience. He'd shown up the next day with an assortment of boxed candy.

"It fits your request. Now be silent," Teal'c said, "or I will consume all the JujuBees myself."

Grumpy, Vala accused, but silently, because she was quite fond of the Jujubees. And the movie, but she wasn't about to admit that, either.

4\. Howard the Duck. "This film is almost universally reviled," Teal'c said as the credits rolled, "but I feel it has unrecognized thematic merit."

"They just don't get it, do they? What it's like, to be a duck out of water." Vala patted him on the shoulder, and gave him a brilliant smile when he handed her the last box of Jujubees.

5\. The Mummy. "Daniel Jackson," Teal'c tells Vala as Evie crows her triumph over the Bainbridge scholars, "has great antipathy toward this film."

"Oh, does he?" Vala smiles, bright enough to light the room and make a smart man's blood run cold. "Mind if I borrow it?"


	9. Five moments Teal'c lost faith

[](http://annerbhp.livejournal.com/profile)[**annerbhp**](http://annerbhp.livejournal.com/) wanted **Five moments Teal'c lost faith**.

1\. When Kytano was revealed as a Goa'uld impostor, the worst of it was not the betrayal. Nor was it the humiliation of having thrown himself so recklessly after the hope Kytano held out.

The worst was his team. It was subtle, for none of them would ever say anything, but in the weeks that followed his defeat of Kytano they held themselves at a distance. It was not so long past the Rite of Malshuran, and even though those wounds were barely healed he had, without thought, without hesitation, cast aside their concerns and their suspicions. Had cast _them_ aside, the very people who had first given him hope.

And he knew that, for his people's freedom, he would do it again without hesitation.

2\. When he lost his symbiote. Despite his desire to free his people from the yoke of the Goa'uld, Teal'c realized when his symbiote was gone that freedom was not to be as simple as a victorious battle deciding the war. Freedom was to be a struggle, not just with words and weapons, but with change, with limitations, with a restructuring of the very identity of Jaffa.

The enormity of what freedom from the Goa'uld, true freedom, would take crushed him. In the late hours of the night, as his mind craved the kel'no'reem his body no longer needed, and his body craved the sleep his mind was too troubled to provide, he wept at his naiveté.

3\. When he learned Apophis still lived on Sokar's world, twisted in with his rage, and the concern for his team, was a sudden gut-wrenching fear; he wanted to fall to his knees and beg his god's forgiveness for his doubts, for truly only a god would rise again and again from the dead.

He did not let go of the tel'tac's controls for the entire trip back to Earth, so no one would see his hands tremble.

4\. When, flushed with pain and rage, Ry'ac blames him for Drey'auc's death. As his son rains down blow after blow, castigating him for placing the cause of the Jaffa above his family, Teal'c cannot help wishing, for just a moment, that he had killed the three Tau'ri that day on Chulak.

5\. When they sealed O'Neill into the stasis chamber in Antarctica. While his life and death belong to the freedom of the Jaffa, he was no longer one of them. He was Teal'c of the Tau'ri, and as he followed Major Carter and Daniel Jackson from the chair room, he looked back and knew that his heart belonged to them, and to the man they left behind.


	10. Five things John Sheppard envied Cam Mitchell

[](http://marbleslab.livejournal.com/profile)[**marbleslab**](http://marbleslab.livejournal.com/) wanted **Five things John Sheppard envied Cam Mitchell**

1\. There's a moment after SG-1 shows up in Atlantis where John considers asking Mitchell if he'd swap Colonel Carter for Rodney. Just because it'd be nice, on occasion, to get the information he needed without the scathing editorial commentary. But he's not sure he'd know what to do with someone who actually listened to him, and besides, she's a more experienced field officer than him and Mitchell put together, and it's pretty apparent she lets Mitchell be in charge because she's a good soldier. He's pretty sure Mitchell knows it, too, and John doesn't envy Mitchell that.

2\. Mitchell's enthusiasm. John's not been excited about his job in a long time. The whole intergalactic hero thing is pretty sweet, but it's still the job, and yeah, maybe he's still bitter about being fucked over for stepping over a line that he had to cross to live with himself. But Mitchell, he eats it up. Not just the adventure, but the _job_. It's a little creepy in a way, but as John watches Mitchell bull his way through everything in his path with sheer glee writ across his face, he thinks it's got potential.

3\. TV. Damn, but John misses watching football live. The guy who announced the chevrons at the SGC has been sending him recordings of all the NFL games (except the Lions, because that's just embarrassing to see) since they got back in contact with Earth, and that was great until John overheard Mitchell talking about the upcoming season and how he was trying to figure out how to convince General Landry to adjust SG-1's mission schedule so he could catch the opening game.

4\. When he hears the story of how Mitchell got command of SG-1, John's less than charitable in his opinion of the man. "Golden boy" is the nicest thing that goes through his head. John's not quite willing to admit to himself that he's jealous Mitchell's transition to the SGC was so easy - command on a silver platter handed over by General O'Neill is pretty much the sweetest deal he can imagine. It burns, like the bile on the back of his tongue when he'd put that bullet into Sumner.

When Mitchell stands there with that goofy smile and his hand out, flanked by an indulgent SG-1, John smiles back and shakes his hand. It won't always be that easy, John knows, and while he might resent Mitchell's good fortune, he's not so much of an ass that he'll wish the man ill. The universe has enough ill will to go around.

5\. Mitchell's hair. It's so manageable, and no one teases him about it.


	11. Five days that make Sam wish she'd stayed in bed.

[](http://karma-aster.livejournal.com/profile)[**karma_aster**](http://karma-aster.livejournal.com/) wanted **Five days that make Sam wish she'd stayed in bed**.

Spoilers for Heroes I & II.

1\. The day of her quals. She's never told anyone she failed them the first time around. It wasn't the material itself but her overconfidence in her mastery of it. Identifying something, Sam realized, and comprehending it at a level where you can extrapolate upon it are very different things. She'd relied on knowledge rather than understanding. Sam swore that would never happen again. Until the Stargate. Suddenly she had no grasp on either knowledge or understanding, and for that first year, under the rush of excitement and awe, every morning held that same moment of stomach-dropping realization she was going to fail.

2\. The morning of Janet's memorial service Sam woke up on Janet's couch, her back twinging in protest. Cassie's tall frame – she'd shot up four inches just after she turned fifteen – was curled tight against Sam's side. They'd sat on the couch for hours the night before, not really watching any of the movies they'd rented, the pizza left uneaten on the coffee table.

Sam had to pee, and she was pretty sure if she didn't stretch out her back she'd be popping painkillers all day to deal with the knot forming in the muscle, but she just laid there and stroked Cassie's hair, over and over.

3\. P4X 120. And she'd thought P3X-595 had been humiliating. What she'd drank on that mission had nothing on the pink stuff the Xedrevans had pressed on her through the six hour welcoming ceremony. Sam knew she was in trouble somewhere around the fifth glass – for one thing she had peered into Daniel's cup, and it wasn't pink, but mostly it was the tiny plaid frogs that were dropping out of his right ear. She stared, fascinated, until Daniel waved a hand in front of her and said, "Sam? Sam, are you all right?" She was about to ask him the same thing when something fluttered against her thigh. Inside her pants.

Later, as she lay in a darkened room with a cold damp cloth over her eyes, she heard the Colonel wonder just how she'd gotten her pants off over her boots that fast, and did anyone see where she'd thrown her underwear before she'd gone streaking off through the center of the town?

4\. Adrian Conrad. She'd lain in bed that morning debating whether to go to the gym or to sleep in and have Cassie over to watch bad movies. Their mission schedule had been packed for the last month, and she'd been skipping workouts in favor of lab work, or on rarer occasions, sleep, so she rolled out of bed after offering herself a compromise of one good workout, then she'd come home and relax.

It took six months for her to stop looking over her shoulder any time she left the house.

5\. April 18th, 2001. Daniel and the Colonel had been at each other for most of the week, some small disagreement that had worked itself up into the sort of bitchy, catty snipe fest that boded well for no one. Specifically her, this time, what with the Bedvadrians' wacky idea that as "their woman" (oh please) she should have restrained their zeal, as the High Whatever had attempted to politely characterize their crap (she wasn't their mother for fuck's sake, and really, was it some sort of universal, holding women responsible for men's behavior?).

Sam thought about just waiting for the guys to come get her from the cell the Bedvadrians has thrown her in after dragging her off for a "protocol lesson," but no doubt the Colonel and Daniel were deep into another round of "shoot it out" versus "talk it out," and if she sat here and thought about it too much she'd just have to shoot them herself when they finally showed up.

It took her twenty minutes to pick the lock on the cell and find her gear. On her way back to the Gate (taking a wide berth around the city) she radioed Teal'c. "I'm going home."

All he said was, _"I believe I will join you."_

Four hours later Daniel and the Colonel burst into the clearing where the gate sat to find her and Teal'c sharing a ziplock baggie full of Oreos she'd had stashed in her vest. "Ah!" Sam held up a hand as they opened their mouths. "Not. One. Word."

"But-"

It came out in unison, but the rest of their protests were cut off by Teal'c. "I believe Major Carter demanded silence. Do not give me reason to enforce that demand." He patted his staff weapon, and Sam smiled and offered him the last Oreo.

And though General Hammond's curiosity as to why she and Teal'c presented the mission brief with no input from the other half of the team was quite apparent, he never broached the subject.

 


	12. Five resolutions that Sam Carter broke

[](http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/profile)[**_minxy_**](http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/) wanted **Five resolutions that Sam Carter broke**.

1\. That she would never forget she was just another person, just one of the billions of humanity the SGC was trying to protect. But it was hard to remember that, hundreds of feet below ground, or standing on another planet. She didn't live just another life. Over the years as she watched the world (and sometimes the universe) come to the brink time and time again, she forgot that everyone else didn't see it too, and when she'd go out grocery shopping, or take Cass to a movie, she'd watch the press of people around her, listen to snatches of conversations that ranged from inane to heartbreaking. None of them knew what was really out there, what she'd given up for them, and some days her pride in what she does for the world tastes of resentment, bitter on the back of her tongue.

2\. Getting out more. It drove her nuts every time the guys insinuated her lack of a social life, because really, the Colonel's poker nights aside, they were just as bad as she was. But they had a point. She loved her job, loved it so much she let it take over every aspect of her life. Her interests, her friends, even her family were tangled into her job so tightly she'd never be able to tease them apart. It was why things with Pete spun out of control so quickly. The thing she craved the most about him was a connection to life outside the SGC. Something, just one thing that was _hers_. And then he wasn't anymore, yet one more piece of her life drawn in by the Stargate (even though logically she knew it was his own insecurities that led to him into that part of her world, she's seen enough to wonder if, on that first day she'd walked through the Stargate, she'd taken on some curse, and the gate would one day consume ever last piece of her until she was merged into the atomic structure of the naquedah). It was easier, most days, not to fight it.

3\. Taking better care of herself. Sam was never good at it, not since her mother died and she started taking care of everyone else instead. She's gotten better about the little things: she watches her diet, she's occasionally managed to wean herself away from caffeine, she stays in shape – though really, it's all less about taking care of herself than it is about doing her job, and that's the problem. She takes care of herself to make sure she can take care of her team, the planet. It's the letter, if not the spirit of her promise, and she calls it an acceptable compromise on the good days.

4\. Comparing any man she met socially to the guys. Even before Pete there were a few men in her life. Nice men. Perfectly nice. Perfectly attractive. Perfectly acceptable. Perfectly… not. There were days it sucked working with three exceptional examples of the male half of the species. It's not just that they're all good-looking ("Lickable," she'd one admitted to an old friend from grad school she'd run into while in Washington, when they went out for drinks one night); after being thrown together at the SGC, they'd all developed a level of intimacy that Sam thought must look frightening to outsiders. Chance, fate, karma, what have you, SG-1 had clicked together into a seamless entity that thrived as a whole. The guys were as much a part of her as breathing anymore, and she made comparisons without even thinking: this man isn't as smart as Daniel, he isn't as funny as the Colonel, he isn't as fierce as Teal'c. It wasn't fair, she knew, to herself or to her unsuspecting suitors, but every time she chastised herself to knock it off, by the end of the evening there was a good chance that over a cup of coffee she'd be tallying up the mental score sheet and end up turning down the offer of another date.

 

5\. Driving the speed limit. She kept that one in the city (mostly), and only because she'd felt so incredibly guilty after the first time she'd been pulled over (at sixteen, in her father's old Thunderbird, doing thirty-five over the forty-five limit). But on the long road up to the mountain she was able to convince herself that a little push on the gas or the throttle wasn't that bad. After all, the world ended all the time, so how did she know this wasn't one of those times, and really, the faster she got there, the better then, right? When she took the job at Area 51 she put the Volvo in storage and picked up a '67 Mustang GT350 390 c.i. V-8 (she lost a bid for a GT500 with a 428 c.i. V8). Out on the empty desert roads she indulged herself. It wasn't the same as the adrenaline rush of flying, or going through the Gate, but oh, it was good. The hum of the engine as the car ate up the long dusty miles was like the familiar thrumming of her pulse, steady and sure.


	13. Five reasons Vala started wearing pigtails

Written for the [**sg1_five_things**](http://sg1-five-things.livejournal.com/) prompt: [Five reasons Vala started wearing pigtails.](http://community.livejournal.com/sg1_five_things/41275.html)

 

1\. It made them all underestimate her. Not that they didn't already, but Vala knows from Daniel that it's a hairstyle common to young girls in this culture. And people tend to discount young girls as unthreatening, that's certainly universal, and often times speak more freely in the presence of someone they read as harmless. Vala's heard a lot of very useful information since she started wearing her hair like that.

2\. She just likes the way it looks, the way her hair bounces and swings. Even before Qetesh twisted up her perceptions of herself, her body, she'd been vain about her hair.

3\. Cracking Samantha Carter was a challenge Vala relished from the second she met the woman. Vala knew facades, and while Sam's cool professionalism and restraint weren't exactly a facade, they certainly weren't all of Sam, and Vala intended to find out more. It proved harder than she expected; where getting under Daniel's skin required practically no effort at all, Sam evaded all of Vala's attempts to get inside her head with a tight, polite smile, or removing herself from the situation entirely. So Vala was quite surprised one afternoon, as they were finishing up in the locker room after a successful mission, when Sam tweaked one of Vala's pigtails and flashed her a brilliant smile before vanishing out the door.

Vala wears them all the time now, hoping Sam will do it again.

4\. Vala's used to commanding attention wherever she goes, but SG-1 is overflowing with exceptional people, and it's a little bit irritating that she now has to work to stand out.

5\. The first time she wore them, she made a comment to Daniel that it would give him something to hold on to when she took him for a ride, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It flustered him so much she decided to wear them all the time, just to keep the image fresh in his mind.


	14. Five things SG-1 did, when they were the only ones turned into 8-year-olds for 24 hours, at the SGC.

For the Original Team [**carnivalofsquee**](http://carnivalofsquee.livejournal.com/) , **Five things SG-1 did, when they were the only ones turned into 8-year-olds for 24 hours, at the SGC**. P rompt from [**sg1_five_things**](http://sg1-five-things.livejournal.com/)

1\. Nothing. George Hammond is no fool, and ordered them locked down in the main isolation room with the big observation window, and three round-the-clock guards on the door, cameras covering every angle, and upgraded security on all the ducts and access panels for three levels above and below the isolation room.

They're still pouting a day later, when returned to normal.

2\. Saved the SGC from an alien incursion. Which was easier than they would have guessed, under the circumstances.

3\. People still talk about the food fight to this day. Except for Sam and Jack, because Sam doesn't like remembering how long it took to wash out the peanut butter Jack put in her hair (and she's really not fond of the nickname "Nutter Butter" that Daniel chanted for the rest of the day), and Jack doesn't like to talk about the broken nose Sam gave him in retaliation, especially after Teal'c (who was apparently neither quiet nor stoic at age eight) taunts him with, "You got hit by a _girl_!" for the rest of the day.

Two weeks later, during a mission, Teal'c and Daniel's tent develops a mysterious leak during a torrential downpour.

4\. No one is sure how they got into the Gate room, and no one is admitting responsibility for giving them the finger paints.

5\. Bounced on the big bed in the guest quarters. They're all high on the candy people have been slipping them through the day, and after the third time they start playing a particularly rambunctious game of tag in the halls, Hammond orders them corralled in the guest quarters. When Hammond goes in to check on them a few hours later, a little concerned that he hasn't heard a report of any trouble, he finds them together in a tangled pile in the middle of the bed, sound asleep.

Hammond keeps the picture of that moment in his wallet for years.


	15. Five things Jack O'Neill wants written on his gravestone.

for the [**sg1_five_things**](http://sg1-five-things.livejournal.com/) prompt: [Five things Jack O'Neill wants written on his gravestone](http://community.livejournal.com/sg1_five_things/50728.html).

1\. _D'oh._

"Hey," he said when Daniel rolled his eyes. "That's pretty much what my response would be."

2\. _Gone Fishing_.

"That'd be my idea of eternal rest," Jack said. "Heaven with a little lake and an unlimited supply of trout and beer."

"I don't think St. Peter would let you pass with a keg in tow, sir."

"If at all."

"Are you implying I'm going to hell, Daniel?"

"I do not believe Daniel Jackson is implying it, O'Neill."

"You all suck."

3\. _Been here, done this, got the t-shirt_

"Hey," Jack said, "If I have to fake my death and go through all the paperwork it's gonna entail to come back to life, I should at least get to plan my own funeral."

4\. _Saved the world. A lot._

"Well, it's true, isn’t it? Just because I'm not a hot blond on a TV show..."

5\. _Father. Friend. Hero._

Teal'c gripped Sam's shoulder, holding her snug against his chest. Sam in turn had an arm wrapped around Daniel, keeping him close into her side. Tangled together, they stared down at the newly placed headstone. Even now, three months out from the funeral, it was hard to imagine him buried and gone.

"You think he's okay with us adding the last bit?" She said as Teal'c leaned around her to drop the flowers they'd brought onto the uneven growth of new grass over Jack's grave.

"Are you kidding? Jack's probably pissed as hell," Daniel said, pressing a kiss against her cheek. "Which means it's the best idea we had."


End file.
